Environmental Racism: Impact of Industry and Pollution on African American and Poor Communities

Poverty - Environment - Pollution and Environmental Contamination - Discrimination - Presidential Election of 2008 - Politics - New York Times

Here is an article from last week's New York Times highlighting the problem of pollution that disproportionately impacts, in an obvious and negative way, African American and poor families.

From the opening paragraph:

"Countless federal laws have been written to preserve far-flung wilderness that Americans rarely visit (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for instance) and endangered species that we scarcely see (from longhorn fairy shrimp to piping plovers). Yet no legislation has been tailored to protect a landscape that is perhaps the most vulnerable: the low-income communities that shelter most of America’s polluting facilities."

While relatively little research has been funded to thoroughly assess the historical damage of this phenomenon to our families' health, research that has been done has documented the poor health effects of this toxic lived reality for so many of our families.